In which a veteran of cultural studies seminars in the 1990's moves into academic administration and finds himself a married suburban father of two. Foucault, plus lawn care. Comments are welcome. Comments for general readership can be posted directly after the blog entry. For private comments, I can be reached at deandad at gmail dot com. The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of commenters), and not those of my (unnamed) employer.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

“Redeeming America’s Promise” is a Travesty

Just before the Great Recession, my state -- along with many others -- made a de facto policy decision to shift the lion’s share of the cost for public higher education from the state to the students. Now that enrollments are in retreat, we’re in serious austerity mode, even as we’re increasingly subjected to “performance” funding on what state funding we do get.

In that climate, the “Redeeming America’s Promise” proposal is a slap in the face. I can’t decide if it’s toxic or just obtuse. Maybe both.

RAP is an ambiguously funded nonprofit pushing a Big Idea. In this case, the Big Idea is discriminatory austerity. Thanks, but no thanks.

In the name of equity and fairness (!), RAP suggests restricting community colleges to charging $2,500 per student, per year, with no option for the college to increase that, despite the needs on the ground. The mechanism is a little indirect -- a scholarship at a set figure that colleges couldn’t go above -- but it’s ultimately a price control.

Meanwhile, it proposes $8,500 per student per year for four-year colleges. In both cases, any future increases would be pegged to the CPI.

For those keeping score at home, that would mean that colleges with more high-income and academically prepared students would get over three and a half times the per-student funding that would go to the colleges that serve more low-income and academically underprepared students. This, in the name of fairness.

One could conceivably make an argument for price controls if they came with serious new operating subsidies to make up the lost income. But they don’t. The closest the report comes is a statement that “[s]tates should also use rising revenue from a growing economy to pay for any additional costs.” Yes, they should. They should do that now. But they don’t. And in the absence of compulsion, it would be absurd to expect that they suddenly will.

The price controls would hit hard. On my own campus, we’d be looking at about a forty percent reduction just to start, and mine is the second least-expensive college in the state. That’s on top of the years of austerity we’ve already endured, the positions we’ve already lost, and the mandates that just keep coming.

You think community colleges are adjunct-heavy now? Drop a forty percent funding cut on them and see what happens. At that point, anything that distracts from the assembly line -- tenure, unions, shared governance, innovation, technology, professional development, student activities, name it -- would have to go. We’d all have to move to the Rio Salado staffing model (22 full-time faculty and 1500 adjuncts for 60,000 students). Innovation and professional development would be reserved for the faculty who teach the scions of the upper classes. The assembly line is good enough for the proles. If that’s what you want, say so, and we can have those debates honestly. If you’re unwilling to say it upfront, well, why?

The arrogance of the proposal is just astonishing. It suggests “fiscal discipline” for a sector that’s already majority-adjunct, and that hasn’t increased its per-student spending in over a decade. It suggests writing discriminatory austerity into law, ensuring that the colleges that serve more low-income and underrepresented populations get several times less money per student. It does absolutely nothing to address external cost drivers, let alone internal ones. It completely whiffs on the economics of the service sector. (The CPI understates increases in the cost of production in the service sector. I would expect a policy think tank to know that.) AT one point, it even refers to basing funding on what services “should” cost, rather than on what they “do” cost. I literally cannot imagine actually running an organization that way. And RAP does it all with the characteristic breeziness of people who don’t actually have to implement it.

No. This is not reform. This is magical thinking expressed in bullet points, with a side dish of racism. This is a travesty. Shame on its authors, and shame on its sponsors. They shouldn’t be looking for redemption. They should be looking for forgiveness. In the meantime, those of us who implement on the ground have actual work to do.

Did you notice that "poor and middle income" goes up to $180,000 per year? Or that the tuition cap only applies to PUBLIC universities? State universities are screwed, but private colleges can still charge whatever they want.

The rip off of CCs is actually worse than you describe, because universities also get several times what CCs get from the state to teach the same freshman classes.

I'll just say that my college is cheap on a national scale, and is operating with fewer total dollars per student than it was 5 years ago, and we can't make the mark they set if "per year" is 30 credits. They might as well tell every poor kid and returning veteran to just jump off a cliff as promote this nonsense.

I actually know some of the endorsers, and they would remain "former" politicians once people associated with the top universities in their state saw what would happen after such a massive tuition cut.

I wonder which foundations are behind this, and who will jump ship once the "plan" is digested in public.

The fantasy is that states will raise taxes so tuition can be held to what it "should" cost to go to college, not what it actually costs within the constraints of current politics.

I agree with Matt. This is indeed an abomination. It is yet another example of lower class people being thrown under the bus. I see a lot of examples of new programs and proposals being given high-sounding feel-good titles, only to find out that you are being screwed when you read the fine print. After all, who wouldn’t want to redeem America’s promise—how can you possibly be against that?

A lot of these proposals come from organizations which have an agenda, sometimes one that is hidden. These organizations are sometimes funded by “dark money”, from donors who have an agenda but who want to remain out of sight. Often, the answer to the question as to why a given organization is proposing a particular policy can be determined by figuring out whom or what is providing their funding. Follow the money! I am willing to bet that RAP is funded by people who will somehow make money or will acquire some sort of financial break if these proposals become law.

The older I get, the more I find that when I ask the question as to why an organization or business does something or doesn’t do something, the answer is usually money.

Under this RAP proposal, community colleges and lower-tier public institutions will be starved to death. More and more of the education will be moved online in the pursuit of lower costs. These schools will become not unlike a chain of Wendy’s fast-food outlets—lots of part-timers and adjuncts working for what is essentially minimum wage with no benefits, no job security, and no chance for a better future.

I have a simple rule for all education reform proposals. Those who propose must agree that any children they have of the relevant age should be educated within the framework of their proposal. So all college age students of those behind this dimwit idea should be educated at a CC that has $2500/ student. Can't go to a private SLAC that spends 15 times that per student. The people who say these things (like those who say "you can't solve k-12 with money) are just so hypocritical.